Jeanie > Jeanie's Quotes

“Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.”
― Jonathan Kellerman

“His experience and training should have taught him that families are the cauldrons in which violence is brewed. (144)”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Blood Test

“To trust someone is to take the greatest risk of all. (180)”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Blood Test

“I'd long thought that a surfeit of sensitivity could be a killing thing, too much insight malignant in its own right. The best survivors--there are studies that show it--are those blessed with an inordinate ability to deny. And keep on marching.”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Blood Test

“I'd been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the excavation of the past as a means of untangling the present and rendering it livable. It's detective work, of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of the unconscious. (179)”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Blood Test

“A good chunk of my life had been spent sorting out the scrambled communications, festering hostilities, and frozen affections that characterized families in turmoil. (257)”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Blood Test

“Creighton tried to smile again. The result fit him like panty hose on a mastiff.”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Deception

“The key to excellent report writing' he said between chews, 'is to take every bit of passion out of it. Use an extra heaping portion of superflously extraneous tautological redundancies in order to make it mind-numbingly boring. So that when one's superior officers read it, they zone out and start skimming and maybe don't notice the fact that one has been spinning one's wheels since the body turned up and hasn't solved a goddamn thing.”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Private Eyes

“The science of psychotherapy is knowing what to say, the art is knowing when to say it. (36)”
― Jonathan Kellerman, Over the Edge

“Kids are like heroin -- an injection of pain when they're around, but even when they're not around it's like that next fix. You just can't stop thinking about it.”
― Faye Kellerman, Hangman

“Yet it seems to me finishing well in this life is not so much about who is the best or greatest at something, but rather who embraces lowliness of heart. Laying down one's rights- meekness- is a blessed virtue, one that must surely come straight from the Throne of Grace.”
― Beverly Lewis, The Prodigal

“The tarter the apple, the tastier the cider.”
― Beverly Lewis, The Revelation

“Disappointments are like weeds in the garden. You can let them grow and take over your life, or you can rout them out and let the flowers sprout.”
― Wanda E. Brunstetter, A Cousin's Challenge

“Remember as you go about your day that you may be the only Jesus some of your friends, neighbors, and family will ever see.”
― Wanda E. Brunstetter, A Celebration of the Simple Life: Inspiring Thoughts from Amish Country

“Perhaps the greatest magic of the human spirit is the ability to laugh, at ourselves, at each other, and at our sometimes hopeless situation. Laughter normalized our lives”
― Torey Hayden

“Safety is the most basic task of all. Without sense of safety, no growth can take place. Without safety, all energy goes to defense”
― Torey Hayden

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.”
― Chaim Potok, Davita's Harp

“Something that is yours forever is never precious”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes, even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul”
― Chaim Potok

“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.”
― Chaim Potok, The Gift of Asher Lev

“I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”
Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.”
― Chaim Potok, In the Beginning

“If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“Now I stand on the knoll before the grave of Jacob Kahn, the cypress tall against the blue morning sky and the wind warm on my face. It is the only sense left me, I hear him say. There are colors in the wind, Asher Lev. Find your demons again and return to your work. Colors wait for you in the wind. Things were too comfortable for you. An artist needs a broken world in order to have pieces to shape into art. Isn't that right, Asher Lev? Comfort is death to art. Asher Lev, artist. Asher Lev, troubler. Asher Lev, my future. His voice weaves through the wind, and I add to it the words of the psalmist, " 'Protect me, O God, for I seek refuge in You. I say to the Lord, Your are my benefactor; there is no one above You....' " The wind is red and black in the trembling cypress.”
― Chaim Potok, The Gift of Asher Lev